Gender Based Violence

Insensitive Comments by NCW Chief and Men’s Rights Activists after Jharkhand Gang-rape of Spanish Biker

Women News Network March 3, 2024 3 min read

The National Commission of Women Chief Rekha Sharma has asked a male foreign national on Twitter that he should not speak negative things about women’s safety to “defame India” if he did not file police complaint when in India.

The statement came in the wake of the nationwide outrage at the news of a Spanish woman biker gang-raped by around 7-8 men who also beat her and her husband, and robbed them of their cash and other belongings. The horrific crime has brought national shame to India. The woman and her husband have herself shared a video on social media narrating her ordeal. She has claimed that she and her husband have been going on camping and biking expeditions across the globe, she biked to over 40 countries safely but got gang-raped in India. This is not the first time a foreigner woman was raped in India. We are reminded of a foreigner woman who was killed in Goa and there are many other. Internationally, India is known to be one of the most dangerous country for woman. No women is safe in any part of India. Sexual harassment is like the very essence of the public sphere. No significant efforts have been made by any government in history to make public space safer for women. The feminist NGOs and academics have done a few projects and campaigns but those are like drops in the ocean compared to the size of the problem.

But, instead of taking this moment to acknowledge how unsafe the public space for women and what the government could do to make public space safer, the National Commission of Women Chief Ms. Rekha Sharma is targeting those who dare to speak the truth about being women in India. In a Tweet Ms. Sharma asked the individual, why he has not filed police cases when he and his female friend was in India and faced harassment, and if he did not, he should not “defame India.”

Did you ever report the incident to Police? If not than you are totally an irresponsible person. Writing only on social media and defaming whole country is not good choice. https://t.co/PiDyspKsiU
— Rekha Sharma (@sharmarekha) March 3, 2024

The NCW is a govt body, Madam Sharma is living on tax payer’s money, her priority should be to address to public grievance but she is talking like a BJP troll who uses fake nationalism, fake pride to brush away criticism even when public suffer.

The other shameful insensitive reaction to the Jharkhand gang-rape of the Spanish woman came from so called “Men’s Rights Activists”. The worst thing to ask a woman who is raped is the question, what was she doing outside of home, the regressive mindset that has kept women indoors for thousands of years. And the Indian men’s rights activist group by the name Save Indian Family Foundation did exactly that.

https://twitter.com/realsiff/status/1764180253205737930?s=20

In a Tweet the group asked, “Who told her to roam in the jungles of Jharkhand at night 10pm? We have no sympathies for the woman, because sympathy will not stop this trend of adventure seeking in jungles.”

They also tried to justify the rape saying that “poor men in India are sex starved because of age old cultural practice of severe hypergamy.”

Words are not enough to express the cheapness in both the behaviour of the National Commission of Women Chief Rekha Sharma and these MRAs (Men’s rights activists) who are nothing but men who want women to go back indoors and do nothing more than cook and clean and be a slave of the patriarchal family system.